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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25832494">it's a slow dive down, a fast distraction; a strange fall forward, my lame reaction</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraWest/pseuds/AuroraWest'>AuroraWest</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Enemies, Gen, Loki (Marvel) Has Issues, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Sanctum Sanctorum (Marvel), Unreliable Narrator</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:27:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,992</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25832494</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraWest/pseuds/AuroraWest</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of oneshots and scenes related to my fic <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23335345/chapters/55900333">Sleight of Hand</a> which don't fit into the main fic.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Loki &amp; Stephen Strange, Loki &amp; Thor (Marvel)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>it's a slow dive down, a fast distraction; a strange fall forward, my lame reaction</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23335345">Sleight of Hand</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraWest/pseuds/AuroraWest">AuroraWest</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written at the request of @franniebanana for the No Excuses Writing Meme on tumblr. The request: BEFORE THE BEGINNING &amp; FIRST for the writing meme!</p><p>Per the meme: BEFORE THE BEGINNING — three sentences (or more) about something that happened before the plot of my current project</p><p>So obviously, here's a 4000 word fic. I suppose that doesn't preclude it being 3 sentences, but it's more than that, don't worry. I cheated a bit and considered my entire series the current project. This fic takes place, like it says, before the beginning, in this case of Sleight of Hand.</p><p>Thank you as always to my beta, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/mareebird/pseuds/mareebird">mareebird</a>!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Loki had thought more than once about marking off the days on the wall of his prison. He could see two problems with that. One, it would only look suitably dramatic if the wall was filled. He had estimated the number of days he would need to mark in order to fill the wall, and it was far longer than he was willing to stay in this terrible place. He would burn it to the ground before he subjected himself to more than a year in this cursed house, in the company of these terrible, insufferable men who called themselves sorcerers.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Two, in order to write on the wall, he would have had to lean over a pile of boxes, and his back already hurt from sleeping on the worn, lumpy mattress in this tiny attic room. He was sure he had developed a bone bruise on his spine from a spring that jammed into him no matter what position he tossed and turned into. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> He hated it here. He hated every single thing about it. He hated this room, which was too small, which was noisy, and smelled of Chinese takeout, gasoline fumes, and cigarette smoke. He hated New York City. July was just turning to August and it was hot and horribly muggy. His hair was a constant, frizzy disaster. He would glamor it to look more presentable, but what was the point when he spent every waking hour sitting in this attic? The only company he had were the shiny black eyes of the cabinet full of glass rabbit figurines. He hated those too. He’d smashed every single one of them three days into his stay here at the cursed <em>Sanctum</em>, but the next morning, they’d somehow reconstituted themselves. And had it been his imagination, or had they all been turned ever-so-slightly so that they were all focused directly on him?</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Obviously, there was nothing magic about the rabbits. They were junk; relics of some former Guardian of the New York Sanctum which had sensibly been hidden away after the end of their tenure. Or their demise. No, the rabbits had not re-formed because they were magic, they had re-formed because someone in this house had chosen to re-form them.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> What he truly hated about being trapped at the Sanctum were the men who had trapped him here. He didn’t care for Wong one bit. But his contempt, his <em>loathing</em> was saved for Strange.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Strange, who smugly insisted that he’d seen the future and that Loki needed to remain at the Sanctum to ensure nothing terrible happened. Strange, who had acted like he knew Loki, when in fact he knew nothing about him. Strange, who didn’t care that he was keeping a prince, a <em>god</em>, trapped in a musty, wretched attic when there was a perfectly serviceable guest room downstairs (Loki knew; he’d slept there, in another dimension). Strange, who ignored him, apparently content to let him rot up here.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> He hated Strange, because Strange refused to let him see Thor.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> The room was stifling today. Sun streamed through the west facing window, thick and hot. The temperature was as bad as anything he’d ever experienced on Muspelheim. Granted, Loki had never made a habit of traveling to Muspelheim, but he’d certainly had the misfortune of being there. Between the heat, the humidity, and the various city odors, Loki was starting to feel like he couldn’t breathe. He eyed the door. No one had ever technically told him he wasn’t allowed in the rest of the house. Obviously, he had made forays down to the bathroom. He still had to piss and shit, which was something he’d snarled at Strange on his first day there.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> “Feel free to shower, too,” Strange had said blandly. After his initial hostility, he had backed off. If anything, he had studiously ignored Loki’s presence in the Sanctum, and Loki didn’t care for that at all. He didn’t want to be ignored, he didn’t want to be patronized or condescended to—he wanted to be treated like a <em>person</em>. But of course, he didn’t really deserve that, did he? And Strange was fully aware of that fact.</span>
</p><p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">Strange knew everything, because Loki had told him everything. Strange knew an earlier version of Loki had become a <em>different </em>version of Loki, splitting their own universe in two, creating a separate, unstable one. Strange knew that this was the only reason Loki had ended up here, in 2023, because that other version of Loki had been a hero, had sacrificed himself for a greater good. The thought made Loki sneer. A greater good? Hardly. The sacrifice had been to die on <em>The Statesman </em>and send an interloper to his timeline in his place. And Loki’s job, once in that other dimension? Destroy it. Murder trillions. He was told it was how things had to be. It didn’t make it any better.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Strange knew what he’d done. Strange also knew, he thought, that Loki despised himself for it. But he didn’t think Strange cared about that part.</span>
</p><p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">In other words, Strange knew exactly what Loki was deserving of, and he treated him accordingly.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Lifting his hair from his neck, Loki closed his eyes and breathed out slowly. Every muscle in his body felt coiled impossibly tight. One of these days, he might simply <em>snap</em>. Unfortunately, when he snapped, all he had to show for it was screaming and perhaps a body or two. And usually, there was one in there that he hadn’t intended there to be.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Something scrabbled at his chest and he stood. The bed squeaked loudly, protesting his sudden absence. Well, nice to be missed, he supposed. Very few people had ever complained about him leaving so loudly.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Another sneer, this one slightly less animated. Now that he was standing, it felt too hot to do much of anything. He picked his way around the bed, avoiding the boxes and junk littering the tiny room, until he could squeeze himself into the narrow space between the bed and the window. His fingertips played across the sill. In two weeks, he hadn’t opened it. He had never opened his window in the other universe, either.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> The scrabbling in his chest got worse.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> He wrenched the window open.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> The sounds of the city flooded in. The smells of the city flooded in, too, though Loki hadn’t thought it was possible for the room to reek more than it did. He should have known. Things could always get worse. There was <em>always </em>farther to fall.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Bleecker Street was visible from his window. There was a manhole cover somewhere on the wretched street that wasn’t quite set right. During the day, it didn’t matter. It was just part of the background cacophony of this place. But at night, when he was trying to sleep (and mostly just lying in a pool of his own sweat, because he could <em>never </em>get cool), every time a car or bus drove over it, it clanked. Loudly. <em>Clang-CLANK</em>. Had it been at regular intervals Loki might, possibly, have been able to get used to it and sleep through it. But it wasn’t. Nor was the noise always the same. He was beginning to be able to estimate the size of the vehicle by the quality of the sound.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> At the moment, traffic was backed up. It was afternoon. Rush hour. He had learned this term when he’d brought Odin to Shady Acres Care Home. One of the staff there had said to him, “We’ll try to get through all this paperwork so you don’t get stuck in rush hour in the Lincoln Tunnel.” He’d smiled and said yes, that was kind of them, though he hadn’t understood what they’d meant until he’d stepped outside and seen the street choked with cars.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> The manhole cover couldn’t make much noise if cars weren’t driving over it at speed, at least. That was something.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Loki raised his eyes from the street to the sky. To the west, beyond Greenwich Village’s rooftops and the Hudson River, over the place they called New Jersey, there were clouds in the sky. Thick, blooming clouds rearing up into the sky. Cold air hitting the hot bubble of misery sitting over Manhattan and boiling upwards. The clouds were dark. A storm was coming.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> His fingers scratched at his palm and he didn’t realize how hard he was digging his fingernails into it until it hurt. He flipped his hand over and glared. There was an angry red line imprinted across the center of his palm. He clenched his fists and let out a breath, watching the clouds get darker and closer. They felt both like an enemy. They felt like a reflection of the anger inside him, a boiling storm bearing down on everything. Even though it was doing nothing but creeping closer across the sky, its capacity for violence was clear. Its silent approach, its quiet fury, the pent up danger reaching out.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Outside, despite the constant cacophony of Manhattan, things seemed suddenly quiet. The air went still, with a heavy, pressing gravity. Loki propped his elbows on the window sill and leaned out, opening the window more. What if he just…left? What if he simply climbed out this window, and when Strange or Wong came up to check on him, perhaps in a week or two, when they began to wonder if he was dead, they would find the window open and the room empty?</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> <em>What if. </em>He knew what if. He knew that Strange had to have set up protective spells all around the Sanctum to catch him. He knew he was on a <em>list </em>and that Strange would know immediately if he went anywhere. But more importantly, he knew that what was keeping him trapped here wasn’t walls or locks, wasn’t spells, wasn’t a list, wasn’t a physical or magical prison at all. It was the threat that Strange had made clear to him when he’d arrived—the threat that if Loki altered things, if Loki appeared ‘before he was supposed to,’ that he might never see his brother again. Or worse, he’d get Thor killed.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Loki had just come from a universe where a version of him had gotten Thor killed. He didn’t intend to follow in that Loki’s path.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> There was a low roll of thunder, so deep that Loki felt it in his sternum more than he heard it. A gust of wind followed. Rain spit, droplets splattering across the neighboring building’s roof, then stopped as the air stilled. He could smell moisture now.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> The wind whistled as it blew over rooftops. Loki straightened up, debating whether or not to close the window. It would be satisfying for everything in the room to get drenched with rain. Then again, ‘everything’ included the bed he slept in. He was perfectly willing to cut off his nose to spite his face, but he didn’t think any of this shit actually <em>belonged </em>to Strange or Wong, so there was a certain element of diminishing returns to that.</span>
</p><p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">With a huff of air, half a sigh, half an annoyed snort, he shut the window. As though it had been waiting for him to do so, rain drops pelted the glass, still more blown on the wind than actually falling from the sky. The afternoon had grown eerily dark. Streetlights flickered on, despite the fact that it wouldn’t be night for hours.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> And suddenly, Loki realized—he didn’t want to be in the attic when the storm hit.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Pushing himself back from the window, he picked his way around the bed, feeling a leap of anxiety in his chest, the need to rush, to <em>do </em>something and be somewhere. He slammed his toe against the cabinet holding the glass rabbit figurines and swore, hopping and clutching his foot before he realized how idiotic he must look. At least he’d put a dent in the cursed thing.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> With effort—and sucking in a deep, pained breath—he put his foot down. What a joke. Who was he trying to look dignified for? He’d had barely any contact with another person since arriving here. Strange and Wong both seemed determined to ignore him. He certainly didn’t want to talk to them, either—the mere sight of them filled him with anger—and yet, the fact that it was <em>them </em>that seemed to be making this choice, driving his isolation further, was infuriating on a level that he couldn’t explain and could barely contain.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> He felt, at all moments, as though a storm might explode out of him. But he had never channeled storms. He didn’t know how to channel anything. All he knew how to do was push everything down further and further inside himself, until it broke him, until he fell apart, and all he could do was destroy anything and everything in his path.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Not physically, of course. Not usually. That, his magic, his capacity for actual, physical destruction, he kept in check. Until recently, he had thought this made him better than Thor. Now, he saw how broken both of them had always been.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> The door hinges squealed as he opened them and he flinched at the sound. It would announce his presence to Strange and Wong, if they were in.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> So what if they were in? They hadn’t told him he couldn’t leave the attic. He could read between the lines, though. They didn’t <em>want </em>him to leave the attic. Out of sight, out of mind. Loki had wondered, over the course of the past two weeks, if Strange had bothered to inform anyone in a position of power who he was housing in the Sanctum. He couldn’t decide if he probably had, and that this was Loki’s punishment, or that he most certainly hadn’t, and Strange was taking some inexplicable risk by keeping him here.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Usually, he decided that he didn’t care. Either way, the outcome was the same. He was stuck there.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> The Sanctum was dark. It was always dark, but the storm outside had blotted out whatever thin streams of light normally made their way to the core of this dusty old house. Loki rattled down staircase after staircase until he reached the foyer. It was impossible to hear anything from outside down here. The storm might be blowing over, going out to sea, missing the city entirely.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Loki’s eyes narrowed and flicked to the front door. Opening it was clearly against he spirit of his confinement here, if not technically the letter. But this was always a distinction he’d taken advantage of. It often distracted long enough for him to formulate a better argument, or, barring that, an escape. His father had usually just gotten angry, though.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> What did he care, though? What could Strange do to him? Torture him? Let him try. Loki would be ready this time. If he was going to surrender him to some other authority, he would have already done so. Loki didn’t understand what Strange was playing at, but he also didn’t care, because the only thing he cared about was seeing the brother that he’d abandoned. And Strange wouldn’t let him.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Baring his teeth in a snarl, Loki strode across the foyer, gripped the door handle, and yanked the door open.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> A blast of wind hit him full in the face; wind and a spray of cold rain that pelted his eyes and cheeks like tears. It was black as night outside and rain was pouring down in sheets. Wind made walls of water, flowing barricades pushing their way down the street. The cars in the street hadn’t moved but they seemed suddenly inconsequential, as though all they could do was fade away and become part of the storm, windshield wipers flying, headlights futilely attempting to cut through the murk.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Loki looked up. A bolt of white-hot lightning split the sky and the crack of thunder was instant, booming inside his chest, rattling his bones. Lightning flashed again, leaving a sizzling negative across his vision, and the thunder joined the previous roll. Something was crushing his heart and his lungs, his sternum and his ribs, everything inside him. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t <em>be</em>; it wasn’t the same as wanting to be dead but he didn’t want to be <em>here</em> but he didn’t know where he wanted to be instead. There was nowhere for him, no place that would have him, no place that he wanted to go to.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Thunder cracked again, jarring his bones, and he had the most stupid thought, which he tried to crush, to throttle into nothingness, the moment it entered his head. But a tiny part of it got through, enough for it to start to verbalize itself in his mind.</span>
</p><p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">For the smallest fraction of a moment, he wondered, he hoped, he wanted and longed for so desperately that he thought his heart might tear itself from his chest with the ache of it, for this storm to be Thor. Thor, discovering that Loki was alive, that his brother was <em>here</em>, on Earth, and had been kept locked up, kept apart from him and their people.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Idiotic.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Lightning flickered again, but this time, it took longer for the thunder to roll across the city. Thor wasn’t out there. Loki didn’t know where he was. New Asgard? The thought made Loki sick. Strange had showed him, the day he’d arrived, a picture of New Asgard. He had typed something into his phone and turned it around for Loki to see. At the end of Strange’s outstretched arm, the phone had been shaking too much for Loki to be able to make out many details. He was glad. He hated New Asgard from what little he could see of it from the photo. He hated the idea of Thor being there, and he hated the idea of himself being there.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> The rain was lessening. To the west, the sky was growing lighter. There was another low roll of thunder, but it was distant, far away and unreachable now. A sick ache for something he didn’t know how to name filled his chest, pressing against his ribs. Homesickness, grief, loss. A chaotic swirl of emotions that he’d never been able to deal with, and which he was more unqualified than ever to handle right now.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> It smelled clean outside, though. The air was cooler, too. And that didn’t make him feel better. But it was something. He hated this city. Anything to make it a little more bearable. It quieted the agonized howl inside him just a little.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Swallowing hard, he closed the door quietly. At least neither Strange nor Wong had returned to see him standing there with the door open, rain blowing in. They probably would have immediately imprisoned him in the room that Loki hadn’t seen since his first day here, a room with no windows and one door that he had suspected led nowhere but back into the room. It wasn’t the sort of place one wanted to find oneself in. To be honest, if Loki were them, he would have kept himself there. They had no reason to trust him. No one on this planet did. The only reason he’d been trusted in the alternate universe that he’d come from was because the Loki <em>there </em>had been trustworthy.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> The fact that the only way he’d earned anyone’s trust was through another version of himself was infuriating, agonizing, on a level that he couldn’t deal with, either. Surprise.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> There was water on the floor, but Loki didn’t care. It would dry. Or someone would clean it up. Either way, it didn’t matter.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> He turned around.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Strange was standing there.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Loki liked to think that he wasn’t easily startled. But at the sight of the other man, his heart jumped into his throat and he took a step back without thinking, banging his heel on the door and thumping his shoulder blades painfully against it.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> It was impossible to tell if Strange had simply been passing through the foyer and frozen when Loki had turned around, or if he’d been standing there watching Loki. The latter was upsetting for obvious reasons, but the former made him angry, too. Loki was standing there, with the front door open, <em>clearly </em>disobeying the unspoken rules that bound him in this house, and Strange was <em>still </em>going to ignore him, to pretend he didn’t exist, that he was nothing.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> He <em>was </em>nothing, obviously, perhaps less than nothing, but the fact that Strange had to keep rubbing salt in this gaping, raw wound suddenly seemed intolerable.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> “Surely you have <em>something </em>to say,” Loki snarled.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Strange’s expression was the same mix of baseline wryness and well-concealed thoughts that he always wore. Even if Loki wanted to know what was going on inside his head—and he most certainly didn’t; it was, in fact, the very <em>last </em>thing he wanted to know—it was impossible to guess.</span>
</p><p class="p2">
  <span class="s1">A tiny crease appeared in Strange’s forehead for the barest of seconds, and then he shook his head. “Probably good for you to get some fresh air,” he said. “Next time, though, you can just open a window.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> He turned to walk away, heading for the kitchen, which was the only room in this part of the house that Loki had been in. Loki took a step towards him. “Is that all?” Loki demanded. “How do you know I wasn’t about to run away? Aren’t you supposed to be keeping me here? Isn’t that what your precious Infinity Stone told you to do?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> When Strange continued walking, Loki shouted, “Don’t ignore me, you pusillanimous, miserable excuse for a sorcerer! Do you know who I <em>am?</em> The least you could do is <em>pretend </em>you’re threatened by me; that you <em>don’t</em> have me under that pathetic, useless thumb of yours! The <em>least </em>you could do is pay lip service to the fact that you’re imprisoning someone terrible, someone who would kill you and everyone in this city without a <em>second</em> <em>thought.</em>”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Strange stopped walking. His back seemed to stiffen; his shoulders appeared to draw back slightly. His fingers curled. Loki felt a horrible sense of satisfaction. But when Strange turned to look at him, his face was the same as always, his eyes flatly refusing to give away a thing. “I’ll take it under advisement,” he said, his voice bone dry.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Then, as though he didn’t have a seething god at his back, he continued into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> “I despise you, Strange!” Loki yelled. “I despise you, and I always will! You and this entire gods-forsaken planet can go to hel!”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> There was no answer. He hadn’t expected one. He was tempted, so very tempted, to send a blast of magic through the kitchen door, to smash it with enough force that it would send splinters like spears straight through Strange’s weak, frail, human body.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> But he didn’t. He stomped back upstairs to the attic, slamming the door so hard that he yanked the doorknob halfway out of the door, broke the door frame, and warped one of the hinges. There was a dark spot in one corner of the ceiling and water dripping down the wall.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> He grit his teeth so hard that they hurt and poured every fiber of his being into not screaming.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> Instead, he turned to the cabinet full of glass figurines. Throwing an arm out, he sent a violent wave of magic at it. The shelves of the cabinet cracked in half; the doors and everything inside shattered, exploding into tiny, pulverized shards of glass.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> In the silence that followed, he could hear the remains of the figurines pouring out of the wrecked cabinet, like sand through an hourglass, like rain on a roof, like the fast, helpless, fragmented remnants of his life.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"> When he woke up tomorrow, the cabinet would be repaired. There was no such fix for him.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Drop me a comment if you enjoyed this! I love knowing what people think! Kudos are also greatly appreciated 😊 </p><p>You should also come hang out with me on <a href="https://aurorawest.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a>! I like to talk about Loki.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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